The present invention relates generally to supports for books, copy and musical scores.
Many devices have been used to hold books open for easier reading. Clips, clamps, stands, and racks of various sorts have all been employed at one time or other. Inabilities to support a book in an upright orientation and cumbersome adjustment features to accommodate books of varied size have prevented most of these devices from attaining widespread commercial acceptance. Thus, a need presently exists for a book holder that can be easily adjusted to retain virtually any book open and upright for reading.
In light of the problems associated with the known devices for retaining books open, it is a principal object of the invention to provide a holder that can be easily adjusted to retain a book in an open, upright orientation for xe2x80x9chands freexe2x80x9d reading. The holder can be manually adjusted to accommodate books of various heights, widths and thicknesses. The holder will be of particular help to chefs working in a kitchen where grasping a cookbook with food-laden hands can damage the cookbook""s pages. Workers in other trades would find the holder to be of similar usefulness.
It is another object of the invention to provide a book holder of the type described that is padded to prevent damage to a book. The padding can be configured like a doll or stuffed animal. Thus, the holder can serve as a toy for children and encourage their reading of books.
It is an object of the invention to provide improved elements and arrangements thereof in a book holder for the purposes described which is lightweight in construction, inexpensive to manufacture, and fully dependable in use.
Briefly, my book holder achieves the intended objects by featuring a base portion having a foot and an upwardly extending leg. The leg has a slot and a lever extending into the slot. The lever has a free end that projects forwardly from the slot. A pair of locking pins extends laterally from the free end and a tab extends rearwardly from the free end through the slot. A movable portion is positioned on the base portion and has a spine slidably engaging the leg. The spine has a pair of retaining flanges joined by a plate to form a channel within which the leg slides. The plate has a slot within which the free end of the lever is slidably positioned. The slot in the plate has opposed sides with notches for selectively receiving the pins to prevent relative motion of the base and movable portions. A pair of arms, each having a hook-like hand, extends from the spine. The base and movable portions are padded and covered.
The foregoing and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become readily apparent upon further review of the following detailed description of the preferred embodiment as illustrated in the accompanying drawings.